December 19 '06: A joint non-profit/federal government effort to promote and assess citizen preparedness in the U.S. has found most Americans having little or no preparedness plans and there is little many Americans have done to educate themselves about disaster readiness, USA Today reported Monday. Based on a scale of one-to-ten, the average "readiness quotient" was a 3.31.

In order to rate and assess citizen preparedness in the U.S., the council "developed two important barometers to help individuals and communities actually measure their readiness and preparedness." Those barometers were: the Public Readiness Index (PRI); and the Readiness Quotient (RQ).

The PRI "is a barometer of how prepared individuals and families in a given community (the nation, state, city/town, geographical region) are for a major emergency - from a natural disaster (hurricane or earthquake, for example) to a terrorist attack or public health emergency," the Council's website read.

The RQ then scores the level of preparedness based on a knowledge of local government and community disaster plans, emergency kits for the home and car, emergency radio knowledge and personal emergency skills such as CPR.

Robert Palestrant the acting director of emergency preparedness and homeland security for Miami-Dade County told USA Today that a culture change needs to happen in the U.S. because "People have this attitude of 'it's not going to affect me' or 'I'll have time to prepare'. ... There's a lot of frustration on our end," to get citizens prepared he said.

The council's director Patricia McGinnis told the paper, "Clearly we're disappointed with the overall number. ... There's not any silver bullet, but we're looking for a tipping point to make (personal preparedness) a movement."